“Surely it is cause for rejoicing to have the alcoholic find sobriety at last.” (ODAT, 27 April)
To rejoice for others’ causes for joy, to desire for others the optimal outcome, to wish others well:
This treats my ills because it sweeps away the barriers of hostility and condemnation that keep me trapped.
Wishing people well—combined with acting in their favour, where appropriate—is a mature expression of love. It entails neither sentiment, affection, approval, entanglement, demand, expectation, transaction, nor specific behaviour. It is not wishing everything for others: it is wishing them well, which means there are conditions on the wishing. Their well might not correspond to their idea of their good.
Similarly, for that love to be expressed in action, there are conditions that must be met. Such love is unconditional in potential but quite conditional in performance.
Aquinas: Beneficentia et benevolentia non differunt nisi sicut actus exterior et interior, nam beneficentia est executio benevolentiae. (Beneficence and benevolence differ only as external and internal act, since beneficence is the execution of benevolence.)
In an inadequate condition I needed others to praise and bolster me. Still in an inadequate condition I shifted that role to God. And wanted to be ‘loved’ by God. God might well love me in a sentimental fashion but that’s of no concern to me, and I cannot offer God’s sentimental love to others by proxy, which is why I don’t tell others that God loves them. If He wants to say that to them, He can. I haven’t been asked to play that role, and I would not presume to.
But as with human love, God’s love in practice is not the sloppy love of a not-too-bright labrador but a stringent, demanding, and conditional one. If I don’t fulfil the conditions, I don’t the promised direction and strength, and that’s on me. God’s more interested, it seems, in chiselling me for usefulness than filling me with marshmallow. The potential for both direction and strength is infinite and unconditional but my experience of it is highly conditional. God’s sentimental love for me—if He has one—is irrelevant in a condition where I’m stripped of the resources I need to live. Nice to know but does not butter the parsnips.
I suspect God rejoices for me when I get things right, as I rejoice for others when they get things right, and this is the borrowing, the mimicry that is legitimate. I’m not speaking on behalf of God but following a good example.